The last 5 years has been filled with up’s and down’s for agency owners. We have seen value propositions go from being basic such as “We will make 3 post a week, 1 email a week, and write a blog post weekly.” To simple opt in email funnels. To live transfer services. And now what? SAAS? Is that the next move?

While SAAS is definitely a smart play.

We have thousands of clients who are still standing out among the crowd without SAAS.

So what are they doing?

The 3 Steps All Agencies Must Master

They are not using a shiny object tactic. And they certainly didn’t learn some really advanced thing that no one has ever heard of. They have simply MASTERED the basics.

Most agency owners will stop reading right about…. NOW.

And that’s because they want instant gratification of some new tactic that will make them rich. And that’s just not how it works.

The 3 steps every agency owner must master are the following.

Messaging, Process, Fulfillment

The market has matured. It’s likely that by the time you are speaking to your prospect they have been pitched on the same exact service before.

So the question comes down to “why you?”

The reality is the offers they were pitched on were likely good. After all it was a marketer pitching them.

So while your offer will be the deal sealer. It’s not what’s going to win this sale to begin with.

You have to MASTER your Messaging.

Messaging

When I ask an agency owner to tell me what they do. They always give me the same ole “I help X do Y” spiel. Quite frankly, I am tired of it.

And your customers will not believe you just because you say you can do something. Because some marketer before told them the same exact thing and let them down.

And today I am taking a different spiel on it.

I don’t want to talk about what you say. But HOW you say it.

I have found that this is infinitely more important.

We have customers who at sign up said “I was just pitched this same thing this week, but I just like you guys better.”

When you think of your favorite company, maybe you can’t think of their message. But you can think of how it makes you feel.

Messaging is deeper than words. But it’s a feeling.

We do this through going deep on our customer. When we speak to them and challenge their process of thinking, we do it through experiences.

We come in educated on why this failed for them in the past. And how this is going to be different.

When they ask us for a guarantee, we give them one on a reachable KPI.

But the feel of our messaging is educational. We want them to walk away from a sales call feeling as if they learned something new.

If you can teach someone something on a call, than you can sell them your product or service.

Rather than focusing on an elevator pitch for hours. I encourage you to focus on how your customer will feel after the EXPERIENCE as a sales call with you or your team.

Process

Do you have a professional sales process put in place? If not… why?

A sales process does not always mean PITCH DECK.

But it does mean that you have a strategic path that you walk your client down that builds up their trust and confidence in you along the way.

This includes things such as visible digital assets. Follow up reminders. Follow up emails after an initial sales call. Etc.

Did you know the majority of agency owners never follow up after a failed sales call? They never pick up the phone to see if circumstances changes.

When people have new information, they have a new prospective.

So why are you not calling with new plans etc?

For instance, 30 days after someone said “not right now,” why not call them and say “Hey, after our conversation last month I was thinking about how we could work together in the future and I think this new offer our company just launched could be it.”

Never give up. They will either buy or get offended. There is no in the middle.

In our company if someone doesn’t ask us to stop calling, we view that as an invite to their super bowl party this year.

Fulfillment

Then the wheels fall off. Since only about 2% of agencies consistently land clients, that leaves about 98% of agencies rarely reaching this point. And when they do the wheels fall off.

Fulfillment is crucial because if you can not retain, you can not scale.

Most clients should stay for 6-9 months minimum otherwise it will be very hard to scale.

If you do not have a solid media buyer than I highly recommend you just white label until you get one.

Three areas you need to consider on fulfillment is: results, communication those results, claiming those results.

Getting results means that you are working with the client to make sure they are not just getting leads but they have the ability to close them. This is the simplest yet most difficult part of fulfillment.

But once you get them you need to make sure you are communicating them on a daily or weekly basis.

We are now using Consolidata to send them text messages on weekly or daily basis that give a summary of yesterdays lead and ad results.

Which bring us to the next part. CLAIMING results.

You can be that your clients at times will not want to give you credit for the results. It is actually rather frustrating when someone can’t seem to see that it was because of YOU that a sale came walking through the door.

You MUST never let them make you feel insignificant. And you have to keep showing that you are the one getting these results. If not… They will drop you the second someone underbids you.

All in all this is a short article on a big topic.

But if you notice, nothing I said was NEW or SHINY.

But everything I said was a fundamental that must be learned.

Ross Christifulli

Co-Founder of Lead Carrot